I've been using GMail and Google Apps for ages, but since Google decided to turn Google Apps into a paying model, I've been wondering if there was no descent alternative? To be honest, I'm getting a bit tired of Google's approach with its continuous addition of new features that do work in the free GMail accounts but don't always work in the Google Apps space (*).

The apps I use mostly are email, calendar and contacts with my own domain and preferably with a good integration with Apple (both MacOS X and IOS) and Android.

One possible alternative is the revamped outlook.com; it has evolved tremendously from old hotmail.com and since it supports own domain names (see http://domains.live.com), it might be a worthy alternative. But unfortunately outlook.com is not recognised as an Exchange account by MacOS X and IOS which means no support for contacts and calendars synchronisation. So we're back to square one.

And Apple's own iCloud.com is not a valid alternative for its lack of domain support.

(*) One of the most annoying "bugs" / "features" is the age verification feature in Youtube. There's no way I can set it correctly in my Google Apps account and as a result I cannot see certain age-restricted videos. But for my GMail account there is absolutely no problem :-( .